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lovely colour1753 Denga


ScottO

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Havn't looked at russian for a while, saw this fantastic coloured Denga (I beleive this is the colour swedish copper as some charles II coins had the same colour) it is offcentre and the raised area on the edge is where the metal wasn't pushed down with the striking machine

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Charles II of Sweden, who was he?

 

Perhaps you had Charles XII in mind?

 

But no swedish ruler by the name of Charles (there were many) is in question here. The known overstrikes are from 1757 and 1758, 1 and 2 kopecks (but no dengas involved). The only instance I have met a notion saying which swedish coin serves as host coin was the Gorny & Mosch auction 183 october 2009 where the large collection of Tom Willy Bakken was sold. The kopecks 1757 (nr 7127) and 1758 (nr 7129) are both said to be overstruck on a swedish öre SM 1747.

 

This creates a problem, though. The weight and diameter do not match. The swedish öre SM coins which were struck from 1730 onwards weigh 14,2 grams with a diameter of 30 mm whereas the elizabethan copper kopeck (roughly) 10,3 - 10,8 grams with a smaller diameter of only 25 - 26 mm. Usually, when a coin is overstruck the diameter will be enlargened, but not here. So, in order to overstruck a heavier and larger coin into lesser weight and diameter cutting must have occured.

 

The ratio between 2 öre SM (34 mm, 28,3 grams) and 2 kopecks (32 mm, 20,5 grams) is closer in diameter but still not close enough to make it an ideal host coin. I do not have any real examples of this in mind. Brekke mentions this coin as nr 93 in "The Copper Coinage of Imperial Russia" but no coin is photographed, nor is this coin represented in the James F. Elmen mail bid sale 13 May 1993, "the Bernhard F. Brekke collection".

 

All copper coins of Charles XII would have been too small (and perhaps obsolete) for this purpose in the 1750s, 1/6 öre SM 1715-1718 weighed only 3,3 grams. A slightly heavier coin "the necessity daler" was struck in different weighs but the most of them weighed 4,5 grams and therefore had suited to be a host coin only for the elizabethan polushka.

 

Another matter, Sweden exported a lot of raw copper in the 17th and 18th centuries, also in the form of plate money. Who knows the raw material of your denga is of swedish origin after all? But I would not say that bright or dark red is in any way typical for swedish coins of this era, this colour occur about as frequently as red patinated coins appear among old copper coins in general.

 

And finally, the swedish king whose copper coins we are dealing with, his name is Fredrik I.

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it calls "red" ( krasnaya) copper (but in real life it is more burgundi of course)

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